Monogamy
by unbearablelightness
Summary: Mindy and Danny discuss the exclusivity of their relationship.


**Monogamy**

They'd arrived on the conversation on a non-assuming Tuesday night. Having taken the subway home from work back to Mindy's together, Danny prepared the two of them a pot of pasta and poured generous glasses of wine.

Mindy had sprawled on her couch, a folder of patient's files resting on her stomach for review for the next day. Was she going to look at them? Yes. Once the motivation from the sauvignon blanc kicked in.

Mindy and Danny's discussing the exclusivity of their relationship was broached in a very non-confrontational manner: they were sitting together on Mindy's couch when Danny asked her what she wanted to do this weekend. Mindy, feeling more sassy than productive from her wine, responded: "You mean, like, we're making weekend plans?"

At this, Danny perked up, shocked and defensive. "No." Was his immediate response, swirling his fork through his plate of linguini. "I mean, we don't have to."

They'd been seeing one another in their determined romantic capacity for four weeks. Progressing from stoic colleagues to friends that had sex was sort of an inevitable end. After Mindy had declined to go on her year-long missionary trip to Haiti with Casey, Danny had abruptly broken up with his ex-wife. Mindy feigned disbelief that Danny would end things with Christina for a few weeks, before giving into the already-established reality that she and Danny were harboring feelings for one another.

They'd broken through façade on an afternoon after work, going out for beverages at an outdoors restaurant with Jeremy and Betsy. Jeremy and Betsy both held feelings for one another that were widely known around the office and being with the two of them encouraged Mindy and Danny to donate more attention that normal to their own dynamic.

Their dynamic, as it turned out that evening, was one of a desire to experiment. Their sleeping together was born more out of a mutual wondering of "hmm, I wonder what _this _would feel like" as opposed to a declaration of love. However, after their four weeks of sleeping together and spending out-of-office hours together, both Danny and Mindy were expecting the conversation that they were entering into that Tuesday night.

.

"_I mean, we don't have to."_

"No, no, we don't." Mindy threw her hand up, waving him off with nonchalance. A moment passed. "Or we can."

"Yeah?"

"Sure." Mindy nodded. Danny sucked it a seemingly apprehensive breath. "Wait," Mindy looked from her plate to Danny on the opposite of the couch, trying to decide the most delicate way to launch the conversation that was on the tip of her tongue. "Would it be too forward to ask… what… well, weekend plans. Does this mean…"

Danny waited for her to finish her trailed-off sentence. She hated him for making her fill in the gap.

"Okay, fine. Does that mean _something_? Like the elusive _something _that marks a…" Mindy trailed off again, hoping that Danny would get the message behind her vagueness.

If he understood what she was saying, he did not let on. Danny sat across from her, his dinner on his lap, forcing Mindy to full articulate her thoughts.

"Alright. That marks a _relationship_. You win. I said it." It felt good to say, despite the pretense of Danny forcing it out of her. A relationship was a scary term to broach with her co-worker turned fling.

Danny responded with a not unkind "I don't know" and a believable pensiveness that led Mindy to believe that he was not being evasiveness, but rather he did not know.

They mutually seemed to drop the subject. Someone said something very stock and generic, like "Should we just see how things go?" before the two settled slightly uncomfortably into an evening of eating, drinking, watching television, and not having sex.

.

The conversation came to mind again when Mindy and Danny had run out shopping. They had both dropped the pressure to define their relationship, though the intimacy of their hang outs increased each time. The pretense of sexy _90210 _flirtation (the new _90210_, Mindy assured Danny, for she did not want to lead him to believe that she was not a part of new popular culture) had faded away and an easier exchange replaced it. Danny and Mindy now read quietly in one another's presence, both stripped down in their own personal after-work attire.

She and Danny had been invited to a cook out at Gwen's house. Gwen's specific inclusion of Danny in the invite startled Mindy. Time had sort of escaped her, and suddenly she and Danny were being invited places together?

Mindy and Danny stopped after work at the grocery to pick up ingredients for a salad to take to Gwen's. Roaming the aisles to find the necessary ingredients, Mindy could not stop fixating on how she had no firm parameters of what she was doing with Danny, and how he expressed no hesitation to visit the Grady's in Greenwich Village.

The entire subway ride, all Mindy could smell was the vinaigrette Danny had made for the salad, burning her nostrils and a hole in her frantic brain.

.

Their cumulative conversation occurred six weeks into their relationship. That's what it was: a relationship. Whether or not it was monogamous or exclusive, or purely professional/physical, it was still a relationship. They were two people who partook and contributed to one another's lives, and on that, they were a part of a relationship.

Discussing the nature and future of that relationship finally culminated in the wee hours of the night, both of them working a long shift at the hospital. Mindy was half-asleep in the doctor's lounge, with Danny's copy of _On The Road _propped open on her lap.

Danny slunk into the lounge at around two o'clock am, collapsing on the couch beside her. Without much thought, it seemed, Danny slumped against Mindy, curling his arm around her waist, pressing his exhaustion-heavy head into the crook of her neck.

Mindy curled back into him.

And then, suddenly, Mindy startled. She stiffened in a groggy desire to know what they _were. _She broached the subject abruptly, as she had that first night: "Danny, what are we doing here?"

Danny's voice was hoarse and unconscious: "Sleeping."

Mindy nudged him awake, trying to peel herself out from his embrace. She kept her voice to a whisper, so as to establish the mood for the conversation is one of earnest inquiry, not accusation.

"I'm really not a great girlfriend." She whispered. Mindy didn't know why that sentence came out of her. She kept going: "Like, I do some weird things. And not weird in a cool Tina Fey way." Mindy looked over at Danny's firmly shut eyelids. "I don't know if you ever read _Bossypants. _You should. It's hugely inspirational. But I just mean that like…" Mindy picked up Danny's novel from her lap. "I would never read a Jack Kerouac novel on my own accord. Maybe in college, when I was trying out the Beatnik lifestyle and trying to roll my own herbal cigarettes. I don't know. I was in Medicine. I didn't want to smoke tobacco but I also wanted to look like Lucky Strike girl." Mindy sighed. "They never had an ad that really celebrated chubby Indian women."

Danny shifted against Mindy. Was he awake?

"I buy bottled salad dressing. Danny? When we were grocery shopping before Gwen's and you were buying that fig flavored balsamic vinegar to make your own dressing? I had no idea what you were doing. I would have bottle a bottle of ranch and called it a day."

Danny opened his eyes, but just rested his head against the back of the couch, studying her.

"I collect those green Gatorade water bottles." Mindy was more awake now. "I don't know why. I don't know if it makes me feel like I'm on _Space Jam _or what, but I do." Mindy watched Danny's face twinge with delight for a second. "I've also once had an entire bag of chocolate covered almonds for dinner." Mindy paused. "_Twice_." Mindy paused again. "Okay, it happens a lot, but they're so good. But they're like, four hundred calories for one handful, Danny." She threw her hands up in the air, dismissing him like he was challenging her in some way. "I don't know how it happens."

"I have a drawer full of pantyhose with a busted toe. And don't call them stockings, because I hate that. I don't know. I might need them one day to make, like, a really cool Halloween decoration."

"And Danny, I know that it's totally gross, but I sometimes lose my toenail clippings on the bathroom floor. I know that they're there but I _cannot _find them." Mindy cringed. "And I don't think I've changed my toothbrush since Obama's been president. Danny?"

Mindy didn't mean to sound self-deprecating; her over-exhaustion prompted a slew of honesty that she just could not contain. Danny responded with the most heartwarmingly sincere smile, his head still resting against the couch. He just shrugged.

Mindy continued to wait a few seconds and then spoke: "I just don't know if I am a good girlfriend. I'm not usually someone's girlfriend." She looked across the room, just to break eye contact. "I like to sleep with my own blanket."

"Me too."

Mindy focused her attention back on Danny, eager to hear more from him. What did he make of Mindy's personal assessment of her being ill-equipped for monogamy? She was unsure if even bringing exclusivity _up _was something that was warranted.

Mindy was pleased to hear Danny's response. It was something she was not used to in the majority of her relationships, and certainly something that was foreign to her longstanding, albeit evolving, understanding of who Danny Castellano was. He calmed her anxieties in such a simple almost old fashioned way.

Maybe it wasn't old fashioned, Mindy realized. Or maybe, in Danny's total lack underlying messages or mixed messages or anything to do with technological manipulation toward Mindy, his approach seemed old fashioned. Danny preferred to show affection in physical gestures and words, stating things in an uncomplicated way to prove to Mindy that no, her fridge full of Hidden Valley Ranch was going to be something that dictated their relationship.

Danny went on to prove that. He said to her, in his unique blend of non-negotiable seriousness and kindness, that her list of perceived horrible qualities did not matter. Danny said "I don't care" in a way that absolutely softened Mindy, fueling her want to hear more of that.

"But I mean, Danny…" Mindy began, hesitant to continue but overcome with a need to totally brief him. "I'm the girlfriend who frames an Instagram photo of us, like, two weeks in."

Danny considered this. And then, in a fumbling, tired manner, he reached for Mindy's cell phone that was on the coffee table before them. Like the technologically illiterate man that he was, Danny struggled for a moment to get the camera function working on Mindy's phone.

He shuffled her in close to him, posing to take a picture.

Mindy stopped him. "What are you doing?"

Danny held his pose.

Mindy pushed his arm down. "Danny, seriously, what are you doing?" She looked at him. "I need symbolism articulated for me."

"So you can frame it." He said, explaining the reason for his arm arched above them, posing her phone in front of them. Danny looked at her for a moment. She could see the total exhaustion in his eyes; the total lack of pretense or defense. "I want to do this."

Mindy waited.

"I want to do this with you, Mindy."

A part of Mindy wanted to prompt Danny for more, to hear him elaborate on his vague wording. But it was too late in the night for that and he was being far too sweet. Mindy had grown to know Danny as a solidly good person; as someone she trusted and believed cared about her. It was strange adjusting to Danny as her romantic prospect, seeing different shades of him that she had not been privy to.

But it was nice.

Mindy picked up their conversation, having stalled a moment to bask in the penetrative mix of nerves and disbelief she felt. "Okay." She said quietly.

Danny nodded at this, closing his eyes again and resting his head back onto the couch. He reached out for her, inching her toward him.

Mindy shuffled in, entirely exhilarated, exhausted, and apprehensive about what entering into an exclusive twosome with Danny Castellano meant.

_Fin. _


End file.
